


City of Angels

by Edonohana



Category: Weetzie Bat Series - Francesca Lia Block
Genre: F/F, Gen, Los Angeles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-25
Updated: 2011-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A love letter to Los Angeles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City of Angels

It was New Year's Eve, and the excitement of the 3.8 million residents of Los Angeles, plus assorted visitors and passers-through, sizzled through the crisp and only slightly smoggy winter air. All over the city, the thoughts of those 3.8 million (plus extras) bubbled like champagne in anticipation of fireworks and designer dresses and parties and dancing and as-yet-unkissed midnight kisses.

But not Witch Baby. The sight of her family and friends eating pancakes with real maple syrup, two-by-two in couples so happy Witch Baby could almost see the little red hearts floating over their heads, made her snarl and stab at the nearest taunting valentines with the tines of her fork. Raphael Chong Jah-Love choked on the bite of pancake Cherokee Bat had just fed him, and Cherokee spilled orange juice down the front of her handmade white gauze shirt with turquoise beads.

"Witch Baby!" exclaimed Weetzie Bat. "Don't stab the air over your sister's head. There's no pancakes there."

Witch Baby snarled. Her father, who loved her equally but understood her better, let go of Weetzie Bat's hand and said, "We all love you, Witch Baby. There's lots of different kinds of love."

Witch Baby snarled louder. Dirk and Duck stopped kissing. Ping Chong sat up straighter from where she'd been leaning on Valentine's shoulder. But that didn't make Witch Baby feel any better. Before anyone could catch her and tell her that New Year's Eve was about welcoming the new year, not about making out at midnight, she pushed back her chair and dashed outside. On her way out, she shouted, "I'll be back when the kissing's done!"

She skidded along the sidewalk, leaving one hand out to slap against the peeling white bark of the pepper trees whose trailing fronds brushed her tangled hair and decorated it with leaves.

"Hey, baby."

Witch Baby jumped back before she turned, suspicious and bristling, toward the car that had pulled up beside her.

"Sorry!" said the girl in the car, laughing. "I've just always wanted to say that, haven't you? Does anyone ever really say that?"

Witch Baby stalked toward the car, pushing her hair out of her eyes. A leaf fluttered down. The car-- a very small car, with the sunroof down and a custom paint job in the brilliant pinks and soft grays of a Los Angeles sunset-- seemed designed for someone to lean against it, looking cool.

Witch Baby stuck out her hand, leaned against it, and looked cool. "Hey," she said. "Looking for trouble? You found it." Then, ruining her cool, she added, "I guess as many people say `Hey baby' as `Looking for trouble?'"

"Actually," said the girl, "I'm looking for someone to spend New Year's Eve with. I don't want to go to a party and watch a bunch of people kissing. I'd rather drive around the city with a friend who loves it too and have some fun. What about you? Do you love LA?"

Witch Baby knew all about not getting into cars with strangers, especially the kind who pulled up beside you and said, "Hey baby." But this was a girl her own age, not some sketchy guy, and Witch Baby was pretty sure she'd seen the girl and her sunset car around the neighborhood before.

"Sure," she said. "We can be the `love LA, hate romance' club."

"Deal! Hop in!"

The other girl leaned over and opened the passenger door. Witch Baby hopped in and settled her squirmy skinny body into the soft leather seats. The girl put her foot on the gas and took off. Witch Baby noticed that though the engine had been turned off when she got in, it started up again without needing the key turned again.

"Is this car a hybrid?" asked Witch Baby. "What kind of car is it, anyway?" She ransacked her memory for the names of the teeny British cars that made her father say, "Cherry" in caressing tones when they zipped by on the street. "A Mini Cooper? An MGB-GT?"

"She's custom," said the girl. "I put it together myself. Hybrid engine, mostly British body-- I call her a Mini-B."

"That's amazing!" said Witch Baby.

She took another look at the girl beside her. Her strong calloused hands held the steering wheel in a casual grasp. She had light brown skin, medium brown eyes with a more pronounced tilt than Witch Baby's own, and dark brown hair in a complicated style that wasn't quite cornrows and wasn't quite French braids, and was largely escaping and falling in tangles. Her arms and what Witch Baby could see of her legs were curved with muscle, and the rest of her was curved, period. There was a scar across the bridge of her nose, not disfiguring but noticeable, and acne scars lightly pitted her cheeks. Witch Baby thought she was beautiful.

"I'm Witch Baby."

"I'm Reina."

"Like raindrop?" It rained in LA, a couple times per year; people always acted surprised and indignant, and either skidded around the freeways pretending it wasn't happening, or hid inside and refused to come out until it was over.

"No, Spanish Reina. It means `queen.'" They were out of Witch Baby's neighborhood now, heading away from the beach and into the heart of the city. "Anywhere you want to go?"

Witch Baby shrugged. "I'm kind of hungry."

They pulled over at a rogue hotdog-seller's cart and had hotdogs wrapped in bacon and grilled. The skin popped under Witch Baby's teeth and hot juices flooded her mouth. The bacon was crisp in bits and chewy in bits, greasy and good. While Reina commiserated with the hotdog-seller in fluent Spanish over city officials' efforts to shut down the pushcart business, Witch Baby thought of her family's slow shift to vegetarianism, spearheaded by Cherokee Bat, and ordered another.

"These are better than Pink's," said Reina to the hotdog woman. Witch Baby only knew Angeleno-Spanish, but she could understand that much. "I don't care if Pink's has been there for sixty years and has a giant hotdog on top and lines around the block, yours are better. Is this your regular beat? I'll make sure word gets out."

They grabbed a fresh sliced mango sprinkled with chile and lime from another vendor, and got back in the car. The sun shone down, bright but not hot, and the air smelled like exhaust, chili, and rain. They ate the mango and licked their fingers, and wiped them on a stash of napkins Reina kept in the glove compartment. She liked to eat in the car, she said, but she also liked to preserve her custom upholstery.

They pulled up at the La Brea Tar Pits, Witch Baby's choice, and walked into the park outside the museum. The lake of tar bubbled and plopped, emitting fumes that smelled like engine oil, sulfur, and gasoline. The girls stood and watched the life-size mastodon statues, floating in the tar and posed as if trapped, to see if the wind was blowing hard enough to make them shift and look alive. The one with its trunk raised in a trumpet moved, just a little bit.

"You ever go to the museum?" asked Reina.

"Yeah," said Witch Baby. "Doesn't everybody? My favorite exhibit was the black box where the light comes up, and there's a life-size sabre-toothed tiger snarling at you... and then it goes to black... and then the light comes up again, and there, in its place, is its skeleton. My sister was terrified by that. She had nightmares."

Reina stared out at the ancient lake, fingers clutching the wire fence that prevented modern Angelenos from becoming tar-stained fossils for a museum exhibit. "I dream of this, sometimes," she said softly. "Of the days when this place had no name--not the name the Indians gave it, or the one it kept. Just heat and green and lakes of asphalt with water floating on top to trick all the mastodons and giant sloths and sabre-toothed tigers..." Then, shaking her head so that more of her braids fell down and began to unwind, she stepped back. "Come on. Let's keep heading east."

"Is there somewhere you want to end up?" asked Witch Baby.

"Yeah. I've got the perfect place to watch the fireworks. But not just yet..."

They drove downtown, under the twining golden dragons of the Chinatown gate, and walked from the building with a fifteen foot chicken on top to the plaza that contained three anime stores, the famous dim sum restaurant Empress Pavilion with its usual hour-long wait to get in, two herbal medicine stores, three clothing shops, and a bunch of tables selling tacky tourist goods. They took a number from Empress Pavilion and went shopping while they waited for their call. Witch Baby bought a black silk jacket with a round Chinese collar and six volumes of Angel Sanctuary. Reina bought a tiny model of a giant robot, black Chinese slippers, and a jar of herbal cream that was supposed to cure acne scars.

When their number was called, and they were ushered into the warehouse-size interior of Empress Pavilion, full of hundreds of small packed tables and waitresses rolling carts of steamed dumplings, fried dumplings, cold roast pork and duck, chicken feet, taro cakes, rice porridge, gelatinous black sesame roll-ups, and custard tarts, Witch Baby was delighted to discover that Reina spoke Cantonese.

Reina attempted to pick up a slippery grilled bell pepper half stuffed with ground shrimp and topped with savory brown sauce. "Not so handy nowadays," she said, dropping it for the third time. "Mandarin's more useful in LA, except with..." she lowered her voice tactfully, and dropped it again. "...Old folk in Chinatown... Dammit."

Witch Baby hoisted her own to her mouth with a lucky grab. She would have laughed triumphantly, but her mouth was full.

Reina eyed Witch Baby's chopsticks mournfully. "I'm a disgrace to my Chinese heritage."

They were on the freeway heading for Hollywood, with Stew's album Guest Host playing loudly over the wind and freeway noise, when a white Mitsubishi in front of them swerved to avoid a careless SUV, fishtailed, hit the median, and burst into flames.

Witch Baby gasped. Reina neatly swung her car round and pulled up behind the burning car. As Reina jumped out, the thought came to Witch Baby that the day had been too good to be true, that Los Angeles wasn't just dim sum and friendship and listening to music in cars, but also gangs and pollution and sudden random death on the 10 freeway. Usually it was the dim sum and friendship and music that Witch Baby found hard to remember.

She grabbed her cell phone and dialed 911. "A car crashed and caught fire on the 10 freeway, eastbound right before the Rampart exit," she told the dispatcher. She was amazed by how calm she sounded. "Oh, wait..."

Reina was pulling a small red fire extinguisher out of the trunk. As Witch Baby watched, amazed, the other girl ran up to the car, stopped six feet in front of the flaming hood, braced her feet, and lifted the extinguisher. A cloud of white puffed out. When it cleared, the fire was out. A woman emerged from the car, coughing but without visible injuries. She and Reina stood chatting in a language Witch Baby didn't know but was definitely not Cantonese until, more or less simultaneously, a police car, an ambulance, and a fire truck arrived.

"Let's hit it," said Reina, jumping back into the car. "Quick, before the whole freeway gets shut down!"

She smoothly merged into traffic, then darted off the freeway at the Hollywood exit. The sun was setting above the Hollywood Hills, blazing the exact colors of Reina's car against the black silhouettes of palm trees and the bold white blocks of the Hollywood sign. Reina pulled over, and they watched the sky fade from pink to gray to the uniform glow of the sky in a city where artificial lighting outshines the stars.

Witch Baby hadn't realized they'd been silent for the whole time until Reina spoke, answering a question Witch Baby hadn't asked. "Yeah, it's dangerous here. We die on the freeways, and in the alleys, and in our beds too, like everybody else. But, you know, there's deer up in the hills, and possums and raccoons. We're like that--we hang on, wherever there's a possibility of hanging on... You ought to keep a fire extinguisher in your car, though, when you get a car. They're not expensive and they're easy to use."

"I will," promised Witch Baby.

They walked past a house whose yard contained a rock garden with hundreds of tiny plastic animals arranged by habitat, then hiked up past the Griffith Observatory and into the Hollywood Hills. It was a real hiking trail, and deserted, but Reina unsurprisingly had a flashlight. She also had an extra coat in the trunk, which she loaned to Witch Baby: a vintage leather bomber's jacket, which she said she'd bought at the Jewish Women's Thrift Store on Santa Monica Boulevard for twenty dollars.

"Hey, Reina, I bet you know martial arts, right?"

"What, `cause I'm part Asian?"

"No, because you're prepared for everything."

Reina stopped, reached in her pocket, and flicked her wrist. A sliver of steel glittered in the flashlight's beam.

"Oh," said Witch Baby.

The switchblade vanished back into her friend's pocket. They kept walking. Witch Baby wondered if Reina had ever used the knife. Her own life, despite its problems and complications, suddenly seemed very sheltered. And yet Reina had more money than Witch Baby-- a hybrid engine, leather seats, and British car parts had to cost the Earth. Witch Baby supposed she could ask. Reina certainly wasn't closemouthed. But Witch Baby was enjoying the mystery. It would be a shame to solve it with some simple explanation about, say, growing up poor but coming into money.

The girls sat down on a high stone ledge overlooking the entire city. It was late now, and sweat chilled Witch Baby's body as it dried on her skin. She pulled out a flask. "Hot cider?"

Reina blinked. "When did you get that?"

Witch Baby grinned. "Guy with a push-cart by the Observatory, when you were in the bathroom."

"Very resourceful of you." Reina drank, then passed it back. They sat for a while in silence, side to side for warmth.

"Hey, baby..." said Witch Baby at last.

Reina laughed. "What?"

"I'm really glad you picked me up. This has been a great New Year's Eve. It would have sucked if I'd stayed home."

"I'm glad too."

"Funny thing..." Witch Baby hesitated, not sure if it would be taken wrong. But here in the dark hills overlooking the bright valley, her body warm in Reina's jacket, she felt like she could say anything. "Before I left, my father said there's lots of different kinds of love. He meant that I shouldn't get too hung up on the kissing thing. I mean, it's hard not to. But..."

"I know what you mean," replied Reina. "I'll tell you now, I'm not going to kiss you at midnight. But that's okay, right?"

"Yeah," said Witch Baby. "That's okay."

"Oh, that reminds me... Will you be able to find your way back? I'll leave you the flashlight and jacket. There's a fifty in the pocket for cab fare. And I'll make sure no one bothers you, not even the raccoons."

Witch Baby blinked. But another, wiser part of her was not surprised. "What, do you turn into a pumpkin at midnight?"

"Not exactly..." Reina pushed the flashlight into Witch Baby's hands. "Here, never mind tradition. It's almost midnight anyway. Close your eyes."

Clutching the flashlight, Witch Baby closed her eyes. Reina's lips pressed into hers. The kiss didn't make her body tingle the way it did when she imagined boys, but tears came to her eyes as she felt a different kind of love. Then the warmth faded. When Witch Baby opened her eyes, the other girl had vanished.

"I know you," said Witch Baby to the air that would never seem quite so empty again. Cupping her hands in front of her mouth, she shouted out over the cliff, "And I love you too, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula!"

The freeways below were rivers of diamonds heading one way, rubies heading another. The lights of the city were another field of gems. Fireworks exploded in blossoms and fountains and nebulae of momentary light. The sky of the city, which glowed orange-purple from light-spill even here far atop the hills, was the velvet backing of the jewel-box that was Los Angeles.

"I love you, LA!" yelled Witch Baby. "I love you forever!"

As the fireworks popped and boomed, Witch Baby heard answering calls, louder from the hills and fainter from the valley below: a few of those 3.8 million people taking time out from kissing to yell from windows and rooftops and sidewalks, in a thousand languages joining together, just this once, to shout out their love for the City of Angels.


End file.
